


Of Chaos and Grace

by Itch, VodkaKevin



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types, Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Humor, Crack, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Self-Harm, Self-Insert, Soulmates, Swearing, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-25 19:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4973533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itch/pseuds/Itch, https://archiveofourown.org/users/VodkaKevin/pseuds/VodkaKevin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG IS SAVED," Gabriel Novak proclaims, dragging everybody's favourite angsty hedgehog out of Green Hill Zone and through the fourth wall. Meanwhile, a chronically depressed Psych student and a psychotic Criminology student start receiving messages from two certain fictional characters. While Gabriel takes Itch under his wing (literally), and teaches him to accept himself and the darkness in his head, Shadow finds himself helping to heal a traumatised Alice from her past. But putting so much strain on the fourth wall comes at a price, one the four will have to pay eventually - and as things start to go downhill, how far will each go to keep each other alive? A story of mental health, finding comfort in fictional characters, and the spiritual journey that is laundry on a Wednesday morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On Not Being Tom Riddle

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!  
> This is a crack fic Itch and I started writing during Creative Writing class one day! 
> 
> We chose the fandoms of Supernatural and Sonic the Hedgehog because of the fact that Itch is massive Gabriel trash and I've been a massive fan of Sonic for 12 years now!  
> 
> **Warnings: Self harm mention, suicide mention, implied rape/non-con in flashbacks and a probably hilarious amount of swearing.**
> 
> We hope you guys enjoy, and let us know what you think~! 
> 
> Itch & Alice

It was a pretty average Tuesday morning as Alice and Itch headed towards their creative writing lecture. Itch was still half asleep, purple hair messy and curling round his face as he listened to Alice bitch about some inconsiderate asshole who crashed their car on the habitual route Alice used to get to uni that morning

Sighing, Alice dumped her bag dramatically on one of the rows - because let’s face it, what didn’t Alice do dramatically when she was in a bad mood? She dropped the strap, stretching for a second, before bringing a half-empty can of Monster Zero to her lips and taking a swig, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

 “I mean, c’mon, it’s rush hour. How do you manage to fuck up so badly that you crash in rush hour?! Like, out of all the times in the day when you could crash, it had to be rush hour.” She rolled her eyes and vaulted - albeit ungracefully, over the desk, opening up her messenger bag to pull out her laptop. “What a piece of shit,” she muttered, “I bet it was a fucking dickhead in a BMW. And I bet he crashed into an even more of a dickhead in a Jaguar. You know, the ones that go forty five everywhere. The A27 is _full_ of assholes in Jaguars that go 45 miles an hour.” Itch shrugged, falling into the chair next to Alice and pulling out his laptop, chugging half the can of Monster he was holding in one go before belching loud enough that people on the other side of the room gave him a filthy look. He flipped them the middle finger and tapped in his password, grinning at his laptop background.

“The A27 is full of assholes end of story to be honest.” He muttered, opening OneNote.

 Alice sighed, smiling a little. “True. Hey, Cortana,” she said encouragingly to her computer. C’mon Windows 10, you can do this. Nothing happened.

 “Hey. Cortana,” she said, in a slightly firmer voice. When nothing again, she hit the microphone button and said, “Open OneNote.”

 “Opening Microsoft Edge,” Cortana recited back in a slightly stilted voice.

 “How does Microsoft Edge sound anything like OneNote you actual prick?” Alice shrieked. Before she could lament her first world struggles further, however, the lecturer entered the room, straight away with addressing the class with today’s lesson, which would be in prolepsis and analepsis, aka flashforwards and flashbacks. Why they had to have such bullshit technical terms, Alice thought, frowning, she didn’t know. She remembered thinking exactly the same thing in her AS English Literature exam when writing about The Kite Runner. Speaking of flashbacks… she hit Google Chrome as OneNote opened, typing in ‘Facebook’ and loading up her messages with Itch.

 _‘Btw the WEIRDEST THING happened to me yesterday while I was shopping in town,’_ she wrote, the smile returning to her face. 

  _‘Of course it did,’_ Itch wrote back quickly, loading up ArchiveOfOurOwn to check on the chapter of a fanfiction he’d uploaded last night, replying to the comments and audibly groaning as someone had a complaint about the formatting. “Go fuck yourself.” he grumbled, glancing up at the lecturer. Gross. 11am was too early on a Tuesday. Speaking of weird things though, it did remind him of the dreams he’d been having all week. Flashes of gold, feathers, a weird lilting language that sounded ancient and probably dead. His right hand instinctively reached for the necklace about his neck and he rubbed it softly, feeling instantly comforted. He flipped back to Facebook, liking a friend's new selfie and reading Alice’s new message.

 _‘Nonono okay this was LEGIT WEIRD k,’_ Alice replied, ‘ _so I’m in town right and I’m just shitting along to House of Gold like you know I love to do. I mean, I was in a really good mood so I was literally dancing and dramatically lipsyncing in the street and everyone’s giving me really weird looks but I don’t give a shit right? THEN I FEEL SOMETHING GO PAST ME SO FAST MY FUCKIN SKIRT ALMOST FLIES UP BUT I GRAB IT IN TIME BUT I SWEAR MAN I SWEAR IT FELT SO FAMILIAR YOU DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND. It felt like, you know. **Him.** The way I_ _feel him in the way he speaks to me.’_ Alice stared up at the lecturer who had only just got to explaining what analepsis and prolepsis meant. Remembering how every lecture at her old uni, the one she’d dropped out of, however, had felt like it was in a completely different language, and she’d take this any day. Returning to Facebook and rereading the message she’d just sent, she thought to herself. She hadn’t even heard from him since yesterday. Every thought she’d sent out to him had rebounded uselessly across a mind that felt empty. Kind of like shouting into a very long, dark tunnel. Heh. That described her mind pretty damn well.

 _‘You kno what m8 i’ll give you credit there it does sound p fukin weird. ngl ive been having those dreams again, ukno the gold ones?’_ he sent back, only half-listening to the lecturer. He should be paying more attention, he needed to give a friend his notes after the lecture, but his brain felt too full of fog to even remember his own name let alone make notes on flashbacks and flashforwards. Wasn’t it mainly common sense anyway?

  The sound of Alice slamming her hands against her keyboard in response to Itch caused the lecturer to actually look over at her and frown.

 “Everything okay there, Alice?” he said, using that voice that teachers use when they’re trying to be friendly/humorous (‘Delete as appropriate,’ Alice thought) but they’re actually silently killing you in their minds.

 “Oh, yeah, all good here!” Alice said cheerfully, “just, uh, Windows 8 problems. You know how it is.” She grinned sheepishly.

  The lecturer frowned. “Didn’t you receive your free upgrade to Windows 10 a couple of months ago?”

 “Oh! Yeah. Yeah I did,” Alice’s grin was getting scary, “haven’t had time to download it yet though. It sucks!”

 “That looks like Windows 10 to me,” a girl sitting directly behind Alice said. Alice swivelled round and caught her staring intently at her screen.

 “IT’S A SKIN TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE WINDOWS 10,” she screeched, louder than first intended. The class fell deathly silent. Oops.

 “Aaaanyway,” said the lecturer as the girl ducked her head and returned to her notes. Alice swivelled back around in her chair. “Back to what we’re doing. So, I’m going to hand out an example of an amazing frame narrative a student wrote last year and I want you to-”

  No longer listening, Alice returned to her Facebook message to Itch, who had been giggling at her fuck up solidly for the last twenty seconds. The evidence of where she had slammed her hands on the keyboard was there in the letters **cskaihhioefSIHOFd.** And so, Alice began.

 _‘cskaihhioefSIHOFd sEE WHAT DID I TELL YOU I’M JUST SAYING I’M JUST SAYING THERE’S SOMETHING WEIRD GOIN ON HERE AND YOU KNOW IT,’_ Alice responded. _‘Do… do you think it’s him? You know. Not my him. But your him.’_ And by your 'him' there could be no debate. After introducing Itch to the trainwreck that was Supernatural, Itch had created quite the storm in the Gabriel fanbase with his ever-flowing fluffy oneshots and angsty longer stories, often written in collaboration with other writers. Things had started getting weird when the dreams started - and then came the time when Itch had  _literally_ found an opalite stone in his pocket - which happened to be one of the gemstones associated with Gabriel. Not even logic could explain that. Alice grinned.

 _‘idk man it feels like him but archangels arent real like srsly Alicu chan.’_  Itch scrunched his nose and made a face as Google Chrome shut down for no reason and he glared at the screen. Do you fucking mind Chrome he thought to himself as he reopened it, tapping some ambiguous notes into OneNote.

 “Now, I want you all to write an example of a flashback,” the lecturer droned and Itch rolled his eyes. _'Can i write a flashback to when i was listening to whatever they were saying?’_ he sent to Alice before popping OneNote open, fingers hovering over the keys. As they did, a small **:)** face was typed onto the screen and he nearly threw the laptop across the room. _‘PLEASE TELL ME YOU SAW THAT. IM NOT SAYING IT WAS DEMONS. BUT. THAT WASN’T RIGHT.’_

  Alice stared at Itch’s laptop. _‘Are you sure you’re not on Google Docs or something? You know what your writing friends are like. Trollin’ you from afar haha.’_ Having said that though, Alice didn’t believe it. I mean, of course she didn’t believe it. If anyone was up for a conspiracy, it was her. Sighing, she created a new heading in her OneNote page titled **LAMEASS EXAMPLE OF A FLASHBACK BY ALICE.** New line. Then she started to think.

 “I don’t want you to think,” the lecturer said, watching Alice rest her chin on her hand and stare into the distance. Son of a bitch really had it out for her now. “Automatic writing, remember, everyone! The first thing that comes into your head!”

 Sighing, Alice rested her fingers on the keyboard. The only thing she could think about was yesterday, about him, about shouting into the void and receiving nothing back. That could count as a flashback, right? I mean, they didn’t have to share them with the class so it was all good.

_‘As I sit here shouting into my empty head,’ she wrote, ‘I am reminded of when this all started. Six years ago. When I first had that nightmare where he saved me. September 17th 2009: the day Shadow the Hedgehog saved my life while I slept.’_

Itch thought. Flashback, flashback, FLASHback. Heh. Flash. He began to write.

  _‘The room wasn’t cold, although it looked it. The lighting was a blue grey, and we all just sat there. I wasn’t the first one who started crying. But I know I was the last one to stop.'_  He sighed at the words before deleting them. Nah. He couldn’t think of anything to write, nothing was coming to mind. _‘This one time my boyfriend Grant told Alice to fuck off and now we’re going to move in together.’ Would that do?_

 ‘ _That was the day I first heard him. Well, I suppose it was the day after, assuming the dream took place after midnight. When I woke up, he was… just there. I could hear him. In my head. Of course, I was terrified. I was only thirteen for gods sake. Too young for what would happen next. I blotted him out at first. Didn’t want to hear him. But the dreams kept going. And I kept being able to feel him.’_ Alice rubbed her forehead for a second. She reached for her can of monster and realised it was already empty. Huh. When did that happen? Sighing, she returned to writing.

 ‘ _Sometimes he would fade away for weeks, months. I remember he came back really strongly in December 2011 because he needed my help. That’s when I really learnt how to meditate. Man, we kicked ass in those dreams and meditations. He told me I was good. Better than good, actually. That I did great. That I saved him. Then he left again.’ Sigh. Pause. ‘And then there was summer 2012, the Time When We Didn’t Speak. We only made peace in February 2013 and that’s when he disappeared again and then he came back in December 2014 because I finally had the balls to admit that I needed him and he came, he actually came. And he’s been here ever since. Except now he’s gone again. And I’m scared.’_ Frowning, Alice deleted the last sentence before Itch could read over her shoulder. It wasn’t really a narrative, but hey, whoever said it had to be narrative? Glancing over at Itch’s screen she said, “So what are you writing about, nerd?”

 “Nothing really.” Itch scowled at the screen, not knowing what to write about. He’d tapped out random words, gold, feathers, warmth, okay, safe, but nothing concrete that could be formed into a coherent paragraph. “It’s fucking hard.” Just as he was about to write another word, the symbol  **< 3** appeared on the screen. “Alice. Alicu.” He jabbed her in the arm and pointed. “I didn’t write that.” He had this face on, the what the fuck is going on face.

  Alice frowned, although inside she could feel small sparks of excitement ricocheting off each other. She gave Itch her I’m just saying face and leaned over to type _‘Who are you?_ ’ into the OneNote file. They waited.

  _'I’m not going to write ' **I am Tom Riddle’** if that’s what you’re hoping,' _the ghost typed back, and Itch’s eyes widened in shock.

 “Alice. My laptop is haunted.” he hissed, wary of the lecturer’s steely gaze. At that precise second, the song that he and Alice were listening to through a shared set of headphones changed and they gave each other a look. Heat of the fucking moment.

 The darker haired girl grinned, shooting Itch a look.

 “Should I be getting the salt,” she said, “or maybe painting an anti-angel sigil on your laptop?” Leaning over, Alice started typing again.

 _‘Doesn’t really answer our question - unless you’re actually Voldemort, hence the reference to Tom Riddle,’_ she typed back.

 _‘I was making the Harry Potter reference for Itch, I assumed they’d enjoy it :)’_ Itch swore at his laptop as the Heat of the Moment chorus played. What the hell was going on? He checked the clock. 15 more minutes and he could go get fresh air and stop feeling like he was going insane.

   Meanwhile Alice was practically bouncing in her fucking chair from excitement. After all, this is what she lived for.

  _‘So are you gonna answer the question or not? Or is this gonna turn into some kind of lameass “Guess Who” game?’_ she typed back. The lecturer was frowning aggressively at her but she didn’t particularly care.

 “Alice, what have you written about?” Right on time, he came strolling over. Alice looked at him and smiled brightly.

 “I wrote an autobiographical piece about me having a flashback to the first time I started hearing voices,” she said cheerfully. The lecturer’s accusatory glare slid straight off his face. _‘Oh mental health stigma,’_ Alice thought to herself, _‘How I do love thee.’_

 “Glad to see you’re… um… experimenting with different genres. I suppose,” he said, before hurrying off to the other side of the classroom, glancing over his shoulder as if the girl was going to produce an axe and come after him.

 “I don’t think he’ll bother us again,” Alice muttered to Itch, returning to see if Mr Ghost had replied yet or not. Itch glared after the lecturer as the ‘ghost’ replied to Alice.

  _‘Alice Alice Alice, what makes you think I’m gonna tell YOU who I am? After all, I’m in ITCH’S laptop.’_ Itch raised an eyebrow and glanced at Alice, who couldn’t help shivering a little over the fact that the ghost somehow knew her name.

 “I don’t think he likes you.” Itch chuckled, nudging Alice playfully before typing.

  _‘Ay yo, homie, nu laptop who dis.’_ He laughed at his own joke.

 “Wow, sassy ass son of a bitch,” Alice grumbled, resting her chin on her hand again and watching. “Just let me know when you want me to get the salt,” she added unhelpfully.

 “We’re probably going to be wrapping up soon by the way guys,” the lecturer said, shooting Alice another wary glance. Hah. Another ‘if there’s anything I can do to support you DO LET ME KNOW’ email in her inbox tonight, she bet. She nudged Itch.

 “Let’s go to the computer area upstairs and keep talking to Mr Spooky Ghost,” she said, shutting her laptop and sliding it into her bag. The empty monster can slid off the desk and onto the floor with a clang. Alice sighed.

  “Prick,” she said.

  Itch slammed his laptop shut, not bothering to stick it in his bag as he left the room, hurrying up to the fifth floor and sliding into a seat before reopening his laptop and typing.

  _‘Okay but seriously, who are you?’_ He waited for Alice to come up, he’d kind of run off without her.

  _‘I think you know ;)’_

 Alice took the steps two at a time, meaning she wasn’t far behind Itch. The first thing she saw when she approached was Itch frozen, staring at the laptop screen. She read over his shoulder at the latest message from the ghost, and felt her heart plummet into her stomach.

 “UM,” she said, sliding into the seat next to Itch. “UM. This… this is real. Right? You’re 100% not fucking with me here? This is happening?”

  Because if this was true… what did that mean? What could that mean?

 “I’m not fucking with you, because if I was how the fuck would I be keeping a straight face?” He asked, leaning back in his chair and staring at the computer screen. He had literally no idea how to respond to this. Because, in all honesty, he thought he did know who the messages were from, but that wasn’t possible. No way. He sighed, closing OneNote and jumping on Tumblr.

 Alice grinned slyly. “You know if he’s in your computer, he’s going to be able to tell what you’re looking at on Tumblr, right?” she said. As an image of a naked Gabriel, back arched as Sam Winchester buried his dick into the angel’s ass, she raised an eyebrow and grinned. Itch squeaked, hitting F4 and closing Chrome before anyone could see.

 “Okay. I am officially creeped out,” he said, staring at his laptop background and shuffling the sticky notes around. “What the hell is going on Alice?” He asked with a heavy sigh. He wasn’t the kind to go along with Alice’s conspiracy theories but this was too damn weird.

  Alice leaned back in her chair, resting her hands against her head. She was still grinning.

 “Do you want the truth,” she said, “or the one that will make you feel less scared?” She grinned and reopened her own laptop, before frowning. “Did we get any homework for this class? I wasn’t listening.”

 “I wasn’t listening either. And tell me both.” Itch thumped his head on the desk, stomach grumbling loudly. Of course he hadn’t been listening, there was a goddamn ghost in his laptop that was mocking him. How was he meant to concentrate when it seemed like Gabriel the Archangel was just casually chatting to him through Microsoft OneNote like nothing was new.

  Alice sighed and closed her laptop again. “But Itch, isn’t this at least exciting? I mean, how long have we wanted something amazing to happen outside all this mundane bullshit. And it’s not even like it’s a bad thing if Gabriel Novak actually turned out to be in your computer. He could help you with stuff. All you have to do is open up OneNote and be like _‘O dear Gabriel y hath u forsaken meeee’_ ,” Alice shut her eyes comically and raised her arms, making them float up and down like one of the Navi from Avatar. She opened her eyes and felt the grin slide straight off from her face when she saw text magically appearing on Itch’s OneNote again.

 _‘Hey Alice, what’s black red and speedy?’_ The words said, and Itch snorted.

 “Laptop ghost has you down to a tee. And yeah, it’s exciting, but dude, seriously? This feels like some asshole has hacked into my laptop and watching us via my webcam to fuck with our heads.” He reached over and pressed his thumb against the webcam. “I don’t like it.”

  It felt like a bucket of icy water had just been thrown over Alice’s back, and as the imaginary water dripped down her spine, she felt her eyes narrow.

 “It’s possible,” she said, “but at the same time, wouldn’t the webcam light be on?” She batted Itch’s hands out of the way and wrote back, _‘Haha. I’m laughing. Can you tell?’_ Then, without second thought, she hit the F12 key on Itch’s laptop keyboard, putting the laptop in airplane mode and cutting it off from any potential hackers. She did the same with her own. This way, they’d know that if they did get a response, it wouldn’t be from any…. earthly being. At least.

  The moments ticked by. The cursor flickered, waiting. Nothing.

 “Maybe it was a hacker,” said Alice in a low voice, unable to mask the disappointment she felt. Back to the mundane. She turned back to her laptop, and froze. Words grinned back at her on a what had been empty document.

 _‘Hey look, I can do it here too!’_ Itch noticed too, leaning over to read Alice’s screen. On his own screen, a small smiley face and a heart appeared, alongside a :* face. Whatever, or whoever, was doing this, was having themselves a good fucking time.

 “Maybe we should go get lunch. McDonalds?” Itch asked, reaching into his pocket, fingers closing around the Opalite stone he carried with him everywhere in there. He hissed and snapped his hand back. “Well that’s fucking burning.”

 Alice felt her grin returning at that. She held her hands up. “I’m just saying,” she said, and winked. “But hey. McDonalds sounds great.”

 


	2. Celestial Intervention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itch and Alice go to McDonalds. Gabriel and Shadow appear IRL and prove they're exactly like Itch and Alice feared they would be.

Approximately half an hour later, Itch and Alice were up on the high street, and having fought their way through the lunchtime throng to order their food, were now sat at a table by the window, facing each other. Alice stared out at the overwhelming grey of the London suburb, school kids on their lunch break (although considering the fact that it was now half one, she reckoned it was much more likely that they were, in fact, bunking off) making rude comments about the office workers in their stiff suits and the parents shunting buggies through the crowds that passed them. She grabbed four fries from the portion she and Itch were sharing and shoved them in her mouth all at once.

  “Look, I’m Dean Winchester!” she hollered to Itch, forcing the potatoey goodness into the front part of her mouth and chewing over exaggeratedly. Itch rolled his eyes, getting up and grabbing a handful of straws, slamming them on the table and shouting.

  “STRAWS FOR DAYS. Anyway.” He struggled back into the stool and grabbed a chip, chewing thoughtfully. “I know how we could test if it’s a hacker,” he said finally, ripping a chicken nugget in half. “We could ask something that only people who know us would know.” He placed an entire nugget in his mouth, licking the salt off his thumb.

  “I guess?” Alice frowned, staring into the processed meat in the chicken burger she was about to devour. “But I mean, you have to know us pretty well to make a reference to Shadow the Hedgehog like that. Plus, Harry Potter references? Whoever this is knows us pretty dang well.”

  “Yeah but, you know, something no one could know or even guess, they’d have to like, _know_ us,” he said , grabbing another few chips and shoving him in his mouth. “I mean it’s obvious I’m obsessed with HP, and ditto you and Shadow, so y’know.”

  “Okay, I think I get it,” Alice replied, “so… if they can guess, this means that it’s a ghost slash archangel because they’ll be able to read our minds, right?”

  “Pretty much.” Itch nodded, pulling out his laptop. They’d already seen from the airplane mode shenanigans that whoever this was didn’t need  WiFi to get onto the laptop. He sat there, not knowing what to type. He looked at Alice. Help.

  “Um... “ Alice pondered for a moment, gazing outside the window again. She chewed her lip. The clouds above had turned from a milky white to now a ghostly grey, swelling with excess water vapour. She snapped her fingers.

  “What did you start our conversations with when the two of us first started speaking?” she said, “No one knows that - except us.” Itch gave Alice a wolfish grin and dragged his laptop close.

_'Aight. Ghostie. Gabey. Whatever. I got a question for you.'_

  _'Shoot.'_

_'What did me and Alice used to start your conversations off with?'_

_'Drip drip. Sometimes drip drop, gotta mix it up sometimes~'_

   Itch made a face at the laptop. Well they weren’t wrong. But what the hell did this mean? Meanwhile Alice dragged her chair over to Itch’s side of the table, cramming the last half of her burger into her mouth. She raised her eyebrows.

 “That’s worryingly accurate,” she said, “what about…” She wiped her fingers on her jacket and then stretched her fingers towards Itch’s laptop.

  ' _Alright. The first time when I started having dreams about the guy you lovingly refer to as Mr Black, Red and Speedy, who did he protect me against?'_

  _'Hmm. It’s stuck. ;)'_

   Itch grabbed Alice’s arm.

 “That’s the line Mephiles the Dark says in Broken Armour. The one you wouldn’t stop laughing at when I said it.” He pointed at the screen. “This isn’t a hacker, this is a fucking _Broken Armour_ reference.”

  Alice stared in horror at the screen. So now, not only did this fucking weirdo know about how she and Itch used to type to each other like twelve year olds, he/she also knew about the abomination of a Sonic fanfiction she’d written at the age of thirteen, that was indeed titled Broken Armour. Unable to help herself, she reached forward again.

 _'Alright you son of a bitch. How the FUCK do you know about me and Shadow???_  ' When she retracted her arms, she realised she was trembling slightly.  

  _'Come outside. Take a left. Find somewhere there aren’t many people. :)'_ Itch closed the laptop, grabbing the half empty chips, finishing them in one, and unceremoniously jamming his laptop into the bag. “Alice, c’mon, we’re going.”

   The moment she’d processed the information, Alice found herself trembling more. Hell, her palms were sweaty. It’s like part of her knew what was happening, what was going to happen. She exhaled, her heart thrumming.

  “Okay okay.” She grabbed her own bag and followed Itch out. The pair took a left, peering into sidestreets. After a few moments, Alice pointed down a sideroad. About twenty feet away, was sizeable gap between two buildings. She turned to Itch. “Ready?”

   Itch shrugged, before realising he has no idea what to do. He drew off the infinite wisdom of the Winchester brothers and closed his eyes, about to pray for Gabriel, when he felt someone tap his shoulder. He turned around and burst out laughing. A rather small, pissed off looking anthropomorphic hedgehog was stood behind them, arms crossed. 

  “ALICE PLEASE TELL ME YOU’RE SEEING THIS.”

   Alice stumbled backwards, almost tripping over her own feet like an idiot. He was only about a head shorter than her, much taller than he should have been and was in canon. But it was him. It was him. _It was him._ He regarded her with frozen, crimson eyes - well, they seemed frozen at first glance, but as she continued to stare, she could tell that that wasn't what he intended at all. It was  _more_ than that.

  “It’s… it’s _you_?” she said, unable to stop her voice from cracking slightly on the last word. “You’re… alive? I’m not dreaming?”

    He took a step forward, remaining expressionless.

  “I would like to think that my ability to walk and talk means that I am, in fact, alive,” he said, and just like in her head, he really did seem to emphasise each word in a sentence, like the entire thing would be incomplete without each part _._  Itch grabbed Alice’s arm, shaking her.

  “Alice Alice Alice this is real Alice this is actually real he’s here he’s there I can see and hear him too what the fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair, wanting to reach out and poke him or something, check he wasn’t a very good hologram. He couldn’t be a hologram, his chest was moving as he breathed. Alice couldn’t help herself. She took a step towards him, and as she did, a deep burning sensation suddenly began inside her chest. Right in her heart chakra. She looked down, and almost choked on her own spit. Her tattoo, the very tattoo she’d got to signify everything they’d been through together, of a green chaos emerald, was glowing. She looked up and she saw that he was now staring at it too. Without saying another word he reached forward and pressed his fingers to it. She shuddered under his fingertips, the texture of his gloves unfamiliar on her skin - and as he did the burning sensation stopped. Strange green energy travelled along his arms, and for a moment his eyes flashed green.

  “You have no idea how long you’ve been holding on to that chaos energy,” he said, eyes flickering back to hers. The hostility wasn’t entirely gone - but then again, when was it ever? - replaced by something that only she knew, that expression synonymous with the vibes she got off him when he told her that Everything Was Going to Be Alright. She smiled back at him, stretching her arm out to touch him - because she couldn’t help it, it was human instinct to prove to themselves something was real through Seeing, Hearing and Touching, when a voice suddenly chimed out, almost sickly sweet, from behind.

  “Hello!~”

   Itch spun around for the second time and was greeted with a face he knew almost his own family. Floppy sandy hair, a grin that just screamed kick me and glittering golden eyes that seemed to know something you didn’t. Itch squinted.

  “Well this is it, I’m going insane,” he said simply, looking the archangel dead in the eyes. “Because you’re not - you can’t be real.” He was shaking, his knees were about to give way. There was no way this could be real. He reached out, placing a hand on Itch’s upper arm, leaning down slightly due to the height difference.

  “I am the Trickster after all.” He beamed.

   Alice felt Shadow bristle under her hand, and so drew it away. She turned to face Gabriel bloody Novak, looking him up and down. He was almost exactly the way Richard Speight Jr depicted him in the TV show, except there was something almost…. unfamiliar about his features. She guessed that was what made him an Archangel - he wasn’t of this Earth. And neither was Shadow, either, she thought, looking back at the black and crimson hedgehog, eyes trained on the angel, arms folded again.

  “How… how did you guys even get here?” she asked. Gabriel laughed, wrapping an arm around Itch’s shoulders and dragging the small shell shocked human into a hug.

  “Hello? Trickster? Also, the whole being an archangel thing. Halos,  wings, fanfares and all that jazz.” He shrugged. “Figured I’d come see my favourite human and didn’t want you to be left out Alicu.” He wiggled his eyebrows and Itch just looked up at him in shock.

  “Wha-?” Ah yes, the picture of intelligence. Alice raised her eyebrows and stepped forward, arms folded.

  “So you’re saying,” she said slowly, “that you just…” She frowned, shrugging her shoulders. “Casually broke the fourth wall? C’mon man, I want details here.” Gabriel rolled his eyes and gave Alice a blank stare.

  “I used angel mojo, wiggled time and space around a bit and bingo, one angsty hedgehog,” he said, shrugging a little before ruffling Itch’s hair.

  “But- I don’t under… stand…” Itch was confused beyond belief and literally had no idea what to do or say.

  “The angel is correct,” Shadow murmured from behind Alice, “One moment I’m in my world, the next moment everything is gold and that _jackass,"_ he paused, allowing the full meaning of the word to stretch out through the air between himself and the archangel. "...Is shouting about me ‘being saved’ and then I’m here. That was three days ago.” He stepped forward to stand next to Alice again. His proximity sent goosebumps skittering through her. She frowned, her eyes still on Gabriel.

  “You’re not the type to just dump Shadow the Hedgehog in our world without a favour,” she said, rolling up her sleeves, “so what do you want? And why even are you here?” Gabriel bristled, and he let go of Itch, taking a small swaggering step towards Alice.

  “Whilst I know that you _are_ Itch’s best friend, and that you do your best with him, he’s struggling - _a lot_ \- and I want to keep my favourite human safe from himself. Am I saying you’re bad at being a friend? No, of course not, you’re doing better than anyone else ever has done, but it’s time for some celestial intervention. I want nothing in return.” He turned around, and in the sound of wings, he and Itch were gone.

  The lump re-emerged in Alice’s throat. Well great. Those two were probably off to get ice cream and she was left with Shadow. _‘What the hell does Shadow the Hedgehog even_  do _in his spare time?_ ’ she wondered blindly. She turned back round, hoping that horror wasn’t written all over her face. He was readjusting his gloves, before raising his gaze back to her.

  “I have some things I need to take care of,” he said. 

  “Well, oka-” Alice started to say but a gust of wind struck her full on in the face, and when she had recovered, she saw Shadow was gone. “WELL OKAY THEN!” she yelled into the void, “PRICK!” That being said, she couldn't help but grin. It was nice to meet an actual real entity who was much of a social-interaction-disliking asshole as she was. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, and shaking her head, she wandered back up the alley and towards the uni’s car park. Today had been long enough. _Home time._

 

 


	3. Just Frustrated With the Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Itch get deep with each other. Alice sends Itch the entire lyrics to Lose Yourself by Eminem, while Shadow shows up in trouble.  
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> **MODERATE GORE WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER**  
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  Itch landed on his ass, pure grace and style, as he and Gabriel landed in- _Bude?_

  “Okay, dude, why are we here?” He asked, looking out over the cliffs and down at the high tide, the smell of the salt water invading his nostrils. Gabriel sat beside him, that arm making its way around his shoulders again.

  “I know it makes you happy.” Itch felt a lump in his throat he couldn’t swallow down, and he leant into the archangel with a small smile, watching the waves rise and crash below them.

  “Thank you.” It was the quietest Gabriel had ever heard the small loud human and he chuckled.

  “You’re welcome. I hope Shadow’s not being a prick.” He leant back, stretching his wings behind them both in sunlight.

  “Even if he is, I don’t think Alice will mind.” He thought about it. Nah, Alice probably wouldn’t mind.

   Alice sighed loudly and jammed her headphones further into her ears, shooting a death glare at the television. Her sister Poppy was trying to play Minecraft with a friend from school while they waited for their Dad to Return From the War/Work, but the WiFi couldn’t really handle it, so most of it was her yelling _“WHAT”_ and _“I CAN’T HEAR YOU”_ at the TV while she struggled to download the documentary she was supposed to watch for her criminal law lecture the next day. She hit shuffle on Spotify, and yet more of a band she didn’t even like anymore, but was too lazy to delete from her library, began to play: a moany voice that just begged for a slap rang out, with some guitar in the background that used a bucket load of reverb to cover up how bad the musician was. She hit shuffle. _More of their shit._ She groaned.

  “Oh lord and saviour Shadow the Hedgehog, with the chaos energy you apparently took from me,” she muttered under her breath, “I beg you to _please get shuffle to put something decent on_. Breaking Benjamin maybe. I love some Breaking Benjamin.” She swallowed. “Gabriel. You too. I’m prayin’ to you too here.” Holding her breath, she hit shuffle.

_Breaking Benjamin - Anthem of the Angels_

   She slapped her forehead with her hand so hard it warranted an _“ALICE ARE YOU OKAY”_ from her younger sister. Grinning, she said, “Yeah, just frustrated with the universe.”

   Her sister Poppy slid down back onto the sofa. “I know how you feel,” she said darkly. Alice blinked. The girl was only ten.

   Sadly, ethereal beings might be able to work miracles, but not even miracles could fix the WiFi. The documentary took three hours to download, in which Alice sent Itch approximately six messages, one of which included the entirety of the lyrics to Lose Yourself by Eminem, that yes, she typed out herself. Being a first year uni student was fun, but Christ could it get boring. Even by now at her last uni, she was already being set her first assignments - here, classes were only really just starting, and the reading they were required to do for each lecture was piss easy and only took her half an hour at most. She knew it would probably get harder soon, but on a day when _someone who you’d been communicating with, someone who knew you better than literally everyone else,_ had suddenly materialised in an alleyway and then disappeared within five minutes while your best friend got zapped away by a fucking archangel, it would have been nice to have something to distract herself with. Thankfully, Dad stumbled through the door at approximately 6:15pm while Poppy was watching The Simpsons and the usual evening routine began. Dad yelled at Poppy to Turn It Up While I’m Cooking, then at 6:45pm they all sat down and ate spaghetti bolognese while The Big Bang Theory played and Alice stared pointedly at her computer, bored into doing extra reading for her Foundations in Criminology lecture the next day. Dad yelled at Poppy to “Eat Faster Or It’ll Get Cold” and Poppy replied in a terse, “I’m _Trying_.” Alice took the plates up to the dishwasher. Dad couldn’t quite reach the TV remote so he asked Alice to pass it to him except she dropped it and then the batteries fell out and everyone Had a Sighing Session that turned somewhat comical after a few moments. An hour and a half later and it was time for Poppy to go to bed and Dad went up with her so Alice stretched out on the sofa and stared into space as she flicked through the TV shows that were on, deciding she didn’t want to watch any of them. Dad returned and changed the channel to the Discovery Channel which was playing a documentary about buffalo. Alice started singing Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley loudly and Dad told her to Quieten Down or You’ll Wake Poppy but Alice argued that Poppy Won’t Even Be Asleep Anyway You Know What She’s Like. Five minutes later Dad was humming Buffalo Soldier under his breath. Another hour and a half later and Dad stretched and stood up and Declared He Was Going to Bed Do You Still Want the TV On and Alice replied with Nah I’m Okay Thank You Night Dad and he replied with Night and then he made himself a vodka and grapefruit when he thought Alice wasn’t looking (except she was because she wasn’t stupid and some nights he left the vodka out anyway). As she listened to him climb the stairs she slid down the sofa until she was lying face down and sighed. Still nothing from Itch. He was probably dead. Or he hated her. Alice wasn’t sure which one was worse.

  “I’m not sure being kidnapped by an archangel warrants any form of self hatred towards yourself,” a familiar voice suddenly rang out from behind her. Her head jerked up and she stared at the hedgehog. Humour and relief suddenly turned to horror. He was leaning against the coffee table. A large gash was visible on his arm, crimson matting his fur on either side of the welt. One of his gloves was splashed with red from where it was compressing yet another wound against his side. _Fuck_.

  “What the shitting fuck happened to you, Shadow?” Alice said, jumping to her feet and kneeling down next to him. He tried to stand up straight but staggered again, swearing under his breath.

  “I fucked up,” he hissed, “don’t make a fuss about it.”

   Trying to steady the dizzying feeling slowly rising in her, as well as bile from her stomach, Alice stood again. She couldn’t afford to be a pussy now, but right on cue, she felt herself trip over something that wasn’t actually there.

  “It’ll be fine. I just need something to use as a tourniquet and-”

  “Shut the fuck up and sit down.” Her voice was dark, even for her. For a moment, she found herself on the outside looking in at this sudden change in her character. Well, if this was the person she became during _genuine emergencies..._ she wasn't complaining. Shadow's stubborn snarl had now become a slightly troubled frown, and she took that as a sign that he was listening - that he was listening to _her_. Not taking her chances, she moved across to the kitchen table, ripping off the table cloth and threw it over the sofa. She squared up to the hedgehog. “Are you going to go lie down yourself or am I going to have to fucking knock you out?” she said firmly. The hedgehog regarded her carefully. She had a point. He wasn’t in condition to leave here. Muttering to himself, he limped over to the sofa and lay on his side, the arm with the gash in still pressed to whatever wound was on his side.

   Dad had once again left the vodka out. Alice grabbed it, along with an entire roll of kitchen roll. A trip upstairs and a painful conversation with her sister (“Who are you talking to?” “Oh just practicing my prick impression, don’t worry”) and she had returned with gauze. There was a whole bunch of craft stuff in a stack of drawers by the sofa - conveniently her sister went to a sewing club at the weekend.

   Alice sat down carefully next to the wounded hedgehog. She didn’t think it was possible, but he had actually turned pale, and was practically radiating heat.

  “Do you wanna do your side first or your arm?” she said. Without saying anything, Shadow’s hand twitched. Carefully, Alice pinched his wrist and moved the hand away. She couldn’t help herself. Colourful language spewed out of her mouth at the sight of the bullets, still embedded in his side.

  “What the fuck happened to you?” she said again.

  “I made some mistakes,” Shadow said quietly. She jumped back on her feet and dug inside her Dad’s medical cupboard, finding tweezers.

  “I might have to root around a bit to get the bullets-”

  “I don’t care just _get them out_ ,” Shadow rasped. Alice swallowed the lump in her throat, once again trying to control the dizziness, the strange lump that tickled at her gag reflex. Bracing her hand against Shadow’s side, the blood still spurting out the wound, she aimed for the first hole, where she could clearly see the bullet. It slid out easily, and thankfully was still whole.

  “One done,” she said to the hedgehog.

  “Don’t talk until it’s done,” he responded curtly. Alice looked over at him. He had his eyes shut, mouth twisted back into a sickened grimace. Both hands were balled into fists. Swallowing hard, she went to the next hole, and swore as she accidentally poked the bullet a little further in. The hedgehog inhaled sharply through his teeth. Muttering an apology and trying to steady her trembling hands, Alice tried again. She grabbed the bullet this time but it slithered straight out. “Fuck.” Concentrate, Alice. You’re making this so much worse than it needs to be. She took a deep breath in and tried again. To get a proper grip, she had to twist the tweezers slightly, and felt the hedgehog wince.

  “Almost there,” she said, in a strange soft voice - seemed like she could be both a bad cop  _and_ a good cop at times like this - and holding her breath, pulled the bullet free in a short, sharp motion. Remembering he didn’t want her to talk until it was done, she muttered an apology and moved onto the final hole. This one, she couldn’t even see the bullet - but she could tell something was in there, because whereas the blood was pumping freely now from the other two bullet holes, this one was only seeping a small amount of crimson. Swallowing carefully again, Alice wasted no time in plunging the tweezers into the wound. Shadow hissed again, and for a moment she genuinely considered giving up, wondering if there was any way of taking him to a hospital without the FBI being called to examine the strange anthropomorphic hedgehog who had randomly arrived on Earth, when the tweezers hit something hard. Yes. She twisted again and dragged out… half a bullet.

  “Fucksake,” she muttered. Shadow twisted his head and saw the jagged, blood-covered remains. He lay back down and closed his eyes.

  “Just do it,” he said. Alice lowered the tweezers for a second, rubbing her forehead with her hand, trying to calm her rapidly pounding heart. She couldn’t give up now though. _This stupid ass hedgehog needed her._ She braced her hand against his side again, moving the wound from side to side, wondering if doing so would help bring it to the top. It probably wasn’t helping.

  “I don’t want to stick tweezers in there if I can’t really see it,” she said, reaching for her laptop. Naturally googling ‘How to remove a bullet from a deep bullet wound’ only got results of ‘WRAP IT UP AND GO TO HOSPITAL’ so Alice tried ‘How to remove a deep splinter’ instead. Leaving a wet eggshell or half a pepper on his side for an hour probably wasn’t going to be heavily appreciated. Looking back over at the hedgehog, he had his eyes shut. His breaths were shallow. Fuck.

   Alice examined the final bullet wound again carefully. The half bullet had been pointed towards his ribcage so maybe, just maybe… Tentatively, she pressed in the direction of his ribs with her fingertips and - hah! there was something solid under the surface there, about an inch and a half away from the actual hole.

  “Okay, I know how I’m going to get it out,” she said. The hedgehog was unresponsive, but Alice could still see his chest rising and falling, his eyes twitching behind his eyelids. He only opened them again in horror when she jabbed a needle from her sister’s sewing ct into the skin between his ribcage and the wound.

  “What are you-” he began, as she made a sharp flicking motion with the needle. Without pausing, Alice dug one arm of the tweezers into the bullet wound, dragging the jagged edge of the bullet up and out of the wound, where she held it up triumphantly.

  “I can do things!” she hollered. It took her a moment to realise Shadow was staring at her through heavy lidded eyes, unimpressed. Carefully, she placed the tweezers and bullet down on the floor and grabbed the vodka next.

  “This is gonna sting like a bitch,” she said, “I warn you.” Then she upended half of the bottle on Shadow the Hedgehog’s side.

  A flash of blue and he disappeared. Before she had time to wonder where he’d gone, she almost jumped out of her skin from a distant roaring sound from outside. Two seconds later and he had rematerialised, breathing heavily.

  “All out of your system?” she said.

  “Shut up,” he hissed.

 “Sorry,” she replied, “that probably wasn’t helpful.”

  Tentatively, she wetted three bits of gauze with the vodka and pressed them to his side (she pretended not to see him wince again), binding them to the wound with surgical tape. Then she moved on to his arm.

  “I’m gonna have to clean this one,” she said, “but I have to say, your side was worst to be honest.”

   Groaning, Shadow grabbed the bottle of vodka from her hand and took a swig.

  “Please don’t get yourself drunk while I’m doing this,” Alice said as he took another one, “it thins the blood and that’s going to make it harder to staunch.” Ignoring the hedgehog as he muttered choice words under his breath, she held tissue to the now quarter full bottle and carefully pressed it to his arm, patting the wound, carefully lifting up the skin on either side of the gash and teasing the kitchen roll underneath. The hedgehog was tense the whole time, but he said nothing, staring fixatedly at the coffee table.

  “I’m going to stitch this up now,” Alice said, repositioning herself on the sofa to stop her foot from going to sleep. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a lighter, holding it to one of the needles from her sister’s sewing kit. To double check, she doused it in vodka, as well as the thread she would use (black to match his fur because I’m aesthetic like that fucking fight me, she thought to herself), and then held the lighter to it again. When she was satisfied she probably wasn’t going to give the hedgehog a terrible infection she threaded the needle and started stitching. He was entirely silent, eyes glassy, staring dead ahead of him. Coping mechanism. Detaching himself from what was happening, from how much it hurt, from the reality of having a nineteen year old who definitely wasn’t a first-aider patching you up with a needle and thread.

  “Y’know, when I was in year 7 I got an A* in sewing,” she said jokingly as she finished the first stitch. She didn’t think he had been listening, but suddenly a small smile appeared on the hedgehog’s lips, disappearing before she could properly register it, but there none the less. She grinned herself.

  “So yeah. You’re probably in the best hands in the United Kingdom when it comes to sewing up stuff,” she said, “hospitals ain’t got _shit_ on me.”

   It didn’t take long. Alice debated putting a few stitches in the bullet holes, but they seemed tightly compressed enough and besides, she wanted to wait until tomorrow morning as this would give the vodka time to properly soak into his bloodstream and clear out any lasting infection from the bullet wounds. Trying to clean them herself now would be agony for Shadow as the flesh was already irritated.

  “I’m done,” she said, shaking her hands out from being in one position for so long. She picked up the pieces of bullet from the floor, along with the needle, thread, gauze wrappers and tape and chucked away anything that was rubbish, and put away everything else in their respectful places. She wandered back over to the sofa, assuming to see the hedgehog gone, but instead, he still lay on the sofa, eyes half closed.

  “You okay?” she said to him. He nodded somberly. Then he looked up at her.

 “Thank you,” he murmured, before covering his face with a hand. She guessed that was the I want to sleep signal, so she settled down at the other end of the sofa with her laptop. The flashing symbol of _Itch has messaged you!_ couldn’t have been any more welcome than right now. Wiping her bloodied hands on a kitchen towel, Alice clicked on Facebook and began to read.

  ' _SUP BRO.'_ Itch had typed. He’d called Grant, explained the situation, and although he didn’t believe Itch to begin with, seeing Gabriel mojo them into the room was proof enough, and he let them go. They were back in Bude as the sun was setting, and the colours were bleeding into one another in the sky. Gabriel had his chin on Itch’s head as he held the smaller person close.

  “What’s been gettin’ you down kiddo?” He asked quietly, and Itch stiffened.

  “I- it’s hard to explain.” He muttered, focusing on the sky, the stars, the smell of the sea.

  “I’m a celestial being. Shoot.” He said, hugging Itch tighter.

  “I feel like.. I dunno man, I just feel like I’m not needed, you feel me?” He leant back against Gabriel, head on the angel’s shoulder. “Like, everyone has someone else, and I’m just expendable.” He swallowed, searching for the right words to carry on with. “But I don’t wanna say anything when I feel shit, because everyone else needs me, and I can’t be weak, I can’t let myself slip, because I’m a rock.” He pulled his knees to his chest. “But I- I can’t be strong much longer. I’m breaking apart at the seams and no one even sees to be noticing.” He trailed off, thudding his forehead onto his knees, eyes burning. Fucking pathetic you’ve been with Gabriel for a few hours and you’re already going to start sobbing in front of him? He rolled his eyes at himself and sighed. There was nothing left to say really, that was it, that was the truth. He felt the angel shift around him, and a hand on his cheek.

  “You know Alice cares about you.” His voice was gentle. Itch just nodded. Yeah, sure, whatever.

  “Yeah, sure. No one gives a shit man, I’m too much of a burden, I’m too clingy, and I fall back to square one too fast. No one gives that much of a shit.” He snapped, and he found himself surrounded by gold.

  “Itch, I care. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here with you right now.” He whispered, nose pressing into Itch’s purple hair. “I’m serious. Alice cares about you. You’re the first person she thinks about texting when she gets up in the morning. You’re imprinted in everything around her, from all of the good to all of the bad. She can’t go an hour without thinking of at least three things to tell you that have happened. She loves you - platonically, of course, I don’t think the girl is capable of feeling anything more towards anybody, but that’s just her. Without you, you might as well cut the string off the kite and hope it survives. She’ll be in a shit mood and then she’ll see you and you’re the only one who can snap her out of that. You’re not as alone as you feel.” Despite the fact he didn’t actually believe a single word of what came out the angel’s mouth, he felt a small bit better, and he leant into the ethereal being, looking for comfort that he instantly received. “Listen to me Itch. I get it, every single time you think something is going to go right, it doesn’t. You have flashbacks to when your grandparents died, and you hold onto so much guilt it’s unreal, and so no real reason other than you can’t get it go. You hold on to everything people say to you, but you drop the good stuff as if it were a bomb. You spend your life going around being an asshole because you’ve been burned too many times when you tried to be nice, so you don’t bother.” Itch rubbed his face, fighting back tears. “Trust me, people care. And I understand it hurts. I understand you feel cold, and empty, and your head hurts and you rub over your scars enough it hurts because you can’t get yourself out of the mindset where you feel like you deserve the pain for fucking up in the past. You don’t. You don’t deserve of the shit you put yourself through.” Itch wasn’t sure when he’d started crying, all he knew was that he was, and he wasn’t even sure if they were happy tear, or if they were tears of frustration because he didn’t believe a single fucking thing that’d just been said. Gabriel spun the small person around and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead, brushing his hair from his face. “I get it, you don’t believe me. And that’s okay. But I’m here for you Itch.” Itch’s hands twisted in Gabriel’s shirt, and they hugged, human and angel for a very, very long time.


	4. The Spiritual Journey that is Laundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itch and Gabriel pay Alice a visit. Alice teaches Gabriel about what makes laundry so satisfying, and ends up embarrassing herself. Hilarity ensues.

_'SUP BRO_ ', Alice read on the screen. She dragged her fingers across random keys in response.

  _'fcrgyjhklad.am, ITCH WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN YOU LITTLE SHIT ARE YOU OKAY WHERE DID YOU GUYS END UP GOING WAS THE ICE CREAM GOOD,'_ she typed back out. Her eyes flickered back over to the hedgehog, whose breathing had evened out. Had he really managed to fall asleep that quickly?

  _'Me and Gabriel literally just had like this rly long dmc and i was crying and we were hugging and im ngl angels are rly good huggers,'_ he typed back, huddled under Gabriel’s wings, basking in the soft golden glow they gave off.

  'Omfg really?' Alice replied, _'That’s so sweet, bless :’) well sounds like you had a better night than me.. Shadow shows up here full of bulletholes and gashes and it’s up to your local EXTREMELY SQUEAMISH person to clean him up. I managed to do it though somehow. He’s sound asleep now.'_ She glanced up at him again. His hand had fallen away from his face. Never before had she thought about what Shadow the Hedgehog looked like asleep, but it was like all of the weight he carried with him had been lifted off his shoulders. His facial features had smoothed out a little and he took shallow breaths in and out the way a cat did. She found her facial expression evening out into a sudden soft smile - one that felt incredibly weird for her. Speaking of letting go of weights on shoulders, how long was it since she had done so? Years, definitely. Always something to worry about, someone to mourn the loss of; a battle to fight, dirt to crawl through.It made perfect sense why she’d been able to hear him for the last 6 years. Well, she assumed that this him was the one who she’d shared a brain with since the age of 13. I mean, seeing as he was here and no longer in her head… Either way, she wasn’t complaining. If anyone understood what it was like to always be fighting and always be hurting, it was him. She sighed. All angst and CRAWLING IN MY SKIN moments aside, she was just glad Itch was safe. Although of course he would be - Gabriel Novak the archangel was looking after him. She returned to her computer. _'You back at yours now? Where did you guys even go?'_

  _'The fucker mojo’d us to Bude,'_ Itch wrote back, _'and i guess you could say we’re home?'_ He leant on Gabriel again, looking up at the stars. For years, Bude had been his ‘home’. No matter what went wrong back in London, no matter who he passed to or from, Bude never changed. Never for the worse anyway. He didn’t really want to go back to London, because despite the fact Bude was tiny, it felt right.

   Alice smiled and closed her laptop, knowing that to find a place that was home to Itch was really something. And if it was with Gabriel, she really couldn’t complain. Placing her laptop on the floor she curled up on the other side of the sofa. Of course, she couldn’t resist one last look at the hedgehog, sleeping so gently, so peacefully before she shut her eyes and let the warm sleep fold over her. Today was a day she would, despite everything, do over and over again if she could.

   Of course, it was no surprise to see that Shadow had left by the time her Dad woke her with the sound of the kettle’s whistles. He did question why she had a slightly blood-splattered table cloth draped over her (something she knew hadn’t been like that when she’d fallen asleep, given the fact that Shadow had been lying on it, she realised with a small smile), but she just tilted her head at him and told him she had self harmed again.

 _'Oh mental health stigma,'_ she repeated again as her Dad walked away quickly, _'how I do love thee.'_

   Wednesdays were her day off, meaning she could nap while her Dad and sister got ready for work and school. As the door slammed behind them, she sat up, feeling the sudden emptiness of the house bear down on her, goosebumps flurrying up her arms. She rubbed her face with her hands. Half past eight in the morning. Back at her old uni, this time was very seldom seen on her phone, apart from that one nine am she’d had on… Wednesdays funnily enough. Then again, she’d lived a completely different life back then. Halls, pubs, societies, and even though there hadn’t been many friends, at least people had pretended to like her. Here, she just went in for her classes, ducked her head, and left again, most of the time with Itch. And who could blame her? After the way things ended at her ex-uni… She shook her head. No. She refused to think about it. Alice pushed herself up from the sofa and took the stairs two at a time up to the bathroom. _'Almost as if someone’s chasing you,'_ she thought darkly. Time to shower. As she turned the hot water on and the steam rose, concealing the body she couldn’t look at, the body she would now scrubclean with a flannel so roughly her skin was red and glowing afterwards, she hit shuffle on her phone. The melodic riffs of The Pretty Reckless met her ears.

_And all the lost souls say_

_Every day I wake up_

_Every day I wake up alone_

_Kill me, just kill me, kill m-_

  “Oh fuck off,” Alice muttered to no one, her voice echoing off the bathroom walls.

  “Rude.” Itch called back, sitting on Alice's Dad's sofa beside Gabriel. He didn’t have to be in uni for a while,  and with Gabriel as his wingman (ahhh the puns) he could do what he wanted, and Gabriel would mojo him to the university on time. He yawned widely, waiting for Alice to come back down the stairs.

   Alice froze as she heard someone yell from downstairs. If she wasn’t mistaking it, she figured it was probably Itch - but seeing how weird everything had been, it could well have been a demon mimicking Itch’s voice. Alice squinted through the steam at the door. Yep, definitely locked. Thank god. One way to be sure. She reached for her phone. Good job Sony Xperias were waterproof.

 _'Mate you in my house?_ ’ she sent to Itch, chuckling at how weird it sounded out of context. _‘Or should I actually be getting the salt this time?’_ Itch laughed, before shouting again.

  “I am actually in your house, you literal meme.”

   Gabriel snorted in laughter and handed Itch a bottle of chocolate milk. “For you Sir.”

  “Literal meme?” the darker-haired girl screeched from the shower, “You kiss yo mother with that mouth?” Gross, now she had shampoo on her lips. Spitting into the shower, she rinsed off her hair, grabbed a towel and stepped out, snapping the water off behind her. “You guys see the table cloth by the way?” she said, “I wouldn’t advise sitting on it. Kinda need to chuck that in the washing machine.” Part of her shuddered at the crimson splattered all over it still. What the hell had happened to the guy? She hoped he wasn’t out getting himself in trouble again - as much as patching him up had been a Very Good Bonding Experience, she wasn’t sure it was something she wanted to do every day.

  “Fam, you know me and my mother don’t kiss so…” Itch said, before staring at the table cloth. “Was this you? Oh was this Shadow?” He gingerly picked it up, moving it a little further away from him. “Whichever, it’s grim.” He dropped the corner he’d moved it via and shifted closer to Gabriel.

  “Well who else would it be?” Alice said, pulling on a pair of jeans, black vest top and her favourite red and black hooded shirt and rolling up the sleeves to show off her other tattoo, a watercolour compass. “I mean how many other friends do I have that show up in my Dad’s house casually bleeding out?” She stopped and frowned. “I mean, how many other friends do I even have?” She headed into the room and grabbed the bloodied tablecloth.

  “Gnaaaaaarly,” she said in her best impression of a Californian surfer before turning, lifting her leg like a really shit bowler and aiming it at the washing machine, on the other side of the kitchen. It bounced off the side of the open hole and fell onto the floor. Gabriel raised an eyebrow at Alice’s action.

  “You are aware I can just clean that by doing this,” he said, clicking his fingers, and the tablecloth was instantly cleaned, and folded up on the kitchen counter. “‘cause all you had to do was ask.” He grinned that shit-eating grin once more, and Itch had to hide a smirk at the look on Alice’s face.

   Alice scowled at the angel. “Didn’t actually ask you,” she said, “maybe I _wanted_ to do the laundry? I mean, c’mon man. You’re not a being of substance until you’ve really learnt to appreciate the _spiritual journey that is laundry._ ” Idly, she wondered if Gabriel Novak actually understood sarcasm. Wait, he probably did. I mean _‘Hellooooooo I am the Tricksterrrrrrr’_ she thought to herself in her best impression of a Gabriel caricature. Gabriel just rolled his eyes, clicking his fingers again and sending the tablecloth flying, hitting Alice in the face with a dull thud, before it fell back to the floor, crumpled and bloodied again.

  “Have fun embarking on laundry,” he drawled, and Itch get out a bark of laughter. You should know better than to sarcasm at the Lord of Tricks.

  Alice grinned back at him. “Thank you,” she said, “now I can finally reach laundry nirvana!” She picked it up again and aimed it at the washing machine. This time it went straight in in one.

 “She shoots, SHE SCOOOOREEEEES,” she screamed, turning round and punching the air. Upon receiving only silence, she opened her eyes to see Shadow the Hedgehog standing in front of her, unable to mask the confusion on his face at the sight of her shouting about laundry. She couldn’t help it. One moment Alice’s complexion was a ghost makeup artists would have been jealous of; next moment it was a bright strawberry.

  “Oh, hey!” she yelped.

   Gabriel raised a quizzical eyebrow at the change in Alice’s demeanour, but he said nothing (for once.) Itch cleared his throat, pulling a packet of jellybeans from Gabriel’s pocket, and started to flick them at Alice and Shadow from the sofa, listening to the soft ping they made as they hit the table, or the wall.

  “I wanted to thank you for attending to my wounds last night,” the hedgehog said, eyes suddenly very interested in the floor. Alice swallowed the lump in her throat. Well - tried to.

  “It’s okay!” she said brightly, “how are your cuts doing? Did the stitches stay in? I honestly had no idea what I was doing and-”

  “I think the hospitals in this area would agree that you…” Was that a small level of humour in his voice? _“Ain’t got shit on them.”_ He tilted his arm slightly forward so Alice could see. She bent down and traced her fingers over them. When he winced a little, Alice drew her hand away. “Sorry. Forgot it’s probably still tender.” Her eyes travelled down to his side. The gauze patches were soaked through. “Those probably need to be changed and you should probably put a bandage on too,” she said, “I don’t think the wound’s compressed enough.”

  Shadow nodded. “I can do that,” he said grimly, eyes meeting Alice's again. “If there is anything I can do to repay the debt I owe you, let me know.”

   She folded her arms. “You know what would be great?” she said, “You learning that you don’t have to go and do your stupid shit off by yourself. I mean, I know I’m a goddamn human being and that’s never great, but I mean I can do twenty five pushups and run three miles without stopping and I’m not that stupid. I’m sure there’s something I can do to help you in the future. You don’t have to fight every battle by yourself.” Okay, the last sentence hadn’t been planned. Alice’s mouth snapped shut and she winced. How ironic that she was now saying this.

  _“You don’t have to fight every battle by yourself,”_ her mother had said just a few months ago, when she’d come clean about Why She’d Dropped Out of Uni. What a shit example she was of letting people help. Shadow regarded her for a second, then turned away. In a flash of blue, he was gone, Alice left staring at the space where he’d stood. Behind her, the washing machine began to spin.

  “Someone’s not a morning person,” Itch mumbled from the sofa, chewing on a popcorn flavoured jellybean, before checking his phone. “Yo, Alice, I’ll be back once uni’s done mkay?” He stood up, wincing as his back clicked. Gross. Gabriel stood up too, ruffling Itch’s hair much to his disgust, and he swatted at the archangel. “Do you mind fam what is your damage.”

   Alice turned away and smiled a little. It wasn’t particularly about being a morning person. Sometimes she realised how much she’d learnt about Shadow the Hedgehog after sharing a brain with him for the last six years. “Ye sounds good. I assume your transport will be archangel?” she said, smiling back at her friend and the golden-winged asshole who stood next to him. “Cause I sure as hell ain’t driving you. I haven’t even had coffee yet.”

  “Archangel express is online.” Gabriel gave Alice a salute, arm around Itch’s shoulders, and he zapped them both away to the uni.

  Itch crumpled as they landed funny, wincing.

  “Okay, that was a shitty landing.” He stood up, using the angel as support. All he could be thankful for he guessed was the fact that angel mojo didn’t work like Apparating, therefore he couldn’t end up Splinched.

  As the pair disappeared, Alice turned towards the kettle. She opened her mouth to proudly proclaim, “TIME FOR COFFEE!”, but remembering who had showed up the last time she’d been in full-scale anime mode, she simply snapped the kettle on and drifted downwards into her thoughts.


	5. Toast and Feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly what the chapter title suggests. Alice makes toast for the squad and gets angsty. A strange man in a purple cloak and mask appears. Shadow's chaos spear _literally_ backfires.

   Uni was over for the day, and Itch stumbled down the many stairs to the outside courtyard where he brushed off being given a leaflet, starting his walk towards the station. Gabriel wasn’t there, he’d fucked off whilst Itch was busy, not that Itch minded. How was he meant to focus on the Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Psychology with an archangel next to him poking fun at people’s haircuts and correcting the lecturer because ‘I was there Itch my friend!’ He walked past a lad pack before putting his headphones in, and one of the larger lads decided to made a snide remark under his breath about him. He clenched his teeth, but shoved the earphones in anyway. A weird breeze made him look up, and Gabriel was stood between him and the offending teenager. Itch pulled out an earphone, stunned.

  “Apologise.” Well that hadn’t been what he’d expected. The teenager looked from Gabriel to Itch, then back to the magically-appearing man.

  “Sorry.” He turned, and he and his mates ran off to tell everyone they knew about the man with the golden eyes who’d magically appeared in the street.

  “Thanks,” Itch muttered, not looking up at Gabriel. He could look after himself. Gabriel beamed, handing Itch a small bag of rainbow drops which he gratefully took, and swung an arm around Itch’s shoulders.

  “So, my purple-haired companion, what would you like to do?” he asked, waving his free arm towards the sky, the clouds conveniently moving as he did so the sun could shine down on them like a very warm spotlight.

  “Tired. Wanna go home.” Itch looked up at Gabriel, placing another rainbow drop on his tongue. “You don’t need to protect me y’know, those assholes don’t bother me. Well, they do, but I’m used to it, you feel me?” He threw the empty packet into a bin and hurried across an empty road.

  “I know that, but I don’t like it when people mess with you.” He jogged after Itch, taking his laptop bag off him and swinging it over his own shoulder. “Don’t you complain, I know your shoulders are sore.” Itch rolled his eyes before texting Alice.

_'Oi asshole u want me to come over? I'll have to bring smol gold and annoying.'_

    Alice cracked one eye open and stared lazily at her phone. She rolled over and winced as a sharp pain shot up her arm. Holding the offending limb up she stared at the fresh cut on her forearm, still leaking that familiar crimson fluid, which felt strangely cold.

  “Heh,” she said emotionlessly, “I guess I must be… cold blooded.”

   She had no idea what had caused a sudden onslaught of self harm recently: four other cuts, along with countless more-superficial ones, were still healing on both sides of her arms. Uni was going fine, she was keeping up with her work and reading. She had people that she spoke to in her classes and people who said hi to her on the stairs and in the corridors. Although Shadow didn’t stop by often, he’d appear every few days, showing her his healing wounds. Thankfully, he hadn’t been in any fights as bad as the one on that first day. She’d cut out his stitches after just three days - dude healed scarily quickly. Every time the pair tried to make conversation, however, she would literally feel a door inside of her slam and the words would peter out and then he’d leave again, often without saying goodbye. She smiled to herself, letting her hair fall over her eyes. It was only a matter of time until he probably got bored and left. She wouldn’t blame him. Was that why she had been cutting so much more recently? Nah, she realised. Nah, it wasn’t all because of some bloody hedgehog. She was just Going Through a Rough Patch. Nothing more, nothing less.

  Sighing, she reached for her phone and typed back, _'Sure thing, give me 10 minutes.'_ That would give her enough time to patch up her arm, put the blades somewhere where her Dad wouldn’t see, and make lunch. Taping gauze smothered in Germoline to her arm and wrapping it in a bandage, she found herself humming quietly under her breath, to some Twenty One Pilots song. The chorus to Holding Onto You, precisely. Man, when you actually listened to the lyrics of that song, you couldn’t help but realise just how sinister it actually was. Toast popped up out of the toaster, startling her out of her thoughts. By the time the 10 minutes were up, she was chowing down on a chicken mayo sandwich, waiting for the angel express to come steaming in. The last thing she did was roll down her sleeves, not interested in talking about her favourite habit, even if it was her best friend and angel companion visiting.

   Itch fell in a heap on the carpet as Gabriel zapped them into the living room. He wasn’t used to travelling via angel, it was disorientating and frankly just weird. He tugged on the sleeves of his jacket, covering his hands and standing up.

  “Oi there better be toast for me too,” he joked, sitting down at the table and beaming up at Alice. Sure, he’d only seen her a day ago but she was his best friend, he liked seeing her. Gabriel ruffled out his wings and sat down as well, giving Alice an _I Know What You Did_ look before nudging Itch.

  “You should say please.”

  “Okay angel boy when the last time YOU said please?” Itch quipped back, making Gabriel shut up.

   Alice grinned at the pair, turning round to chuck more bread in the toaster while consuming the final bite of her sandwich.

  “You want some too, Gabe?” Alice said, looking back over at the archangel. He was stood facing her with an accusatory look on his face. She shot him the fakest smile back, reaching into the cupboard as she kept her eyes on him.

  “I mean, we even have both maple _and_ golden syrup! You can’t get much better than that, right?” _C’mon man, Itch is in a bad place and you know this. The last thing that’s needed here is a fucking ultimatum about what I do to keep the darkness out of my head._

_'Alice I can hear you you think very loud,'_ Gabriel muttered to her in her head, before giving her a sunny smile.

  “I would love some, that’d be great.” Itch regarded the two of them suspiciously. Something was weird here. Why were they being so nice to one another?

  _'I know I do you’re forgetting I used to communicate with someone telepathically for 6 years and I can **GO EVEN LOUDER IF YOU WANT,** '_ she yelled into the void, practically able to hear a ringing in her ears from the effort. A beat of silence. The toast popped up next to her. She put one slice on one plate, one slice on another, opened a can of maple syrup and practically upturned it onto Gabe’s slice, before spreading the rest evenly onto Itch’s. She handed it over and turned towards the sink.

_'SO CAN I ASSMUNCH,'_ Gabriel shouted back, licking the maple syrup from his fingers as he finished the slice before stealing some that’d dribbled onto Itch’s plate.

  “Hey Itch-”

 “No you’re not licking my fingers clean fuck off.” What surprised Itch the most, he thought, was the nonchalant atmosphere between himself and Gabriel, as if they’d been friends for years. It was odd, granted, but it was comforting.

  Alice winced as Gabriel's voice thundered through her head. She shot the angel a dirty look before dunking her plate under the tap.

  “Who the fuck licks someone else’s sticky fingers anyway,” she said nonchalantly, “that is a little bit gross.” She didn’t even need to look to be able to tell that the two would be grinning at each other. How _nice_ it must be sometimes to just have someone who didn’t randomly go AWOL for days without warning. Was this the root of her frustration? She had no idea. Itch sighed at Alice’s words.

  “Gabe you’re gross,” he teased, wiping his sticky fingers on Gabriel’s face, grinning. It was the grin he had when he had sauce on his fingers and would persistently try to wipe the sauce on Alice’s face. That was one benefit of having Gabriel around; Alice got less ALICU IM BORED PAY ATTENTION TO ME faces from Itch.

  Alice sighed. Might as well ask.

  “Yo if either of you see black, red and speedy out and about, can you send him my way? Kind of need to talk to him." She grabbed both of the syrup-covered plates and chucked them in the dishwasher, before wiping her hands with a teatowel.

  “Will do Alicu chan,” Itch mumbled through a mouthful of his own fingers, licking the syrup off.

  “I can go get him for you if you want,” Gabriel offered, hand poised ready to click, raising an elegant eyebrow.

  “No!” Alice said, much sharper than she probably meant but hell, you had to get the shadows out of you somehow. “No. It’s fine. He’ll show up. I just…” Nah, she couldn’t say it. She wouldn’t dare admit that she needed him. After all, she _didn't_ need him. She just... needed to talk to him. She cracked a smile and turned away, before turning the handle to the back door and stepping out into the garden. Digging her hands into her pocket, she found an already-rolled cigarette and a lighter. That was worryingly efficient for her. Probably Gabriel’s doing. Stepping a little further towards her little sister’s trampoline, she stuffed the filter end in her mouth and lit up, drawing deep on the rolled tobacco. She sighed. Itch watched her leave.

  “Gabe, stay,” he said, following her out, sitting beside her on the trampoline. “Sup,” he said, knowing something wasn’t right.

   Alice drew on the cigarette again. She ducked her head and smiled sadly.

  “I can’t talk to him,” she said, “I literally can’t. He shows up, we talk for a bit and then I feel myself closing up and then he closes up too and then he leaves. Lather, rinse, repeat. I have things I need to ask him and I can’t bring myself to because I know I’m not going to like the answers one way or another. Like if he really is the version of him I’ve been talking to for the last six years - if it is him, he knows everything. He knows all of the bad things that have happened. If he isn’t..” She shrugged her shoulders. “How am I supposed to open up to another version of him all over again? I don’t think I’m capable of that.” She flicked the ash off the cigarette, taking another toke.

  “I think it is him,” Itch said simply, swinging his legs. “Because in all honesty, why would Gabriel bring you a random Shadow? He’d bring you _your_ Shadow. That’s what I think anyway, and half the time I think I’ll be fine on 3 hours of sleep.” he chuckled, before bumping Alice with his shoulder. “I know it probably won’t make you feel better, but I believe in you.”

  “Blergh,” Alice replied, flicking yet more ash off the cigarette, “I guess. Who’d have thought. I spend the last six years sounding off at the asshole and then he shows up, he finally shows up, and I have literally no idea what I’m doing. I guess I’m just worried he’s gonna get bored of me. I mean, how many people would kill to be in my position right now? To _hang out with Shadow the Hedgehog._  And half of them are probably so much cooler and so much more worth his time than me. I’m just a nineteen year old stuck in a permanent existential crisis who gets faint at the sight of blood.”

  “Alice I have an angel of the Lord following me around,” he said, staring at Alice. “I’m not even fucking religious and he’s trailing after me. If anyone is being underwhelming right now, I think it’s me.” He grinned. “And I think you’re cool.”

   Alice smiled back at her friend. She stood up off the trampoline. “Well, I guess I need to find him,” she said, “I ain’t just sitting around here waiting for some dude to come find me like I’m a goddamn damsel in distress.” She paused for a second. “Haha. _Damn_ sel.” She stuck her tongue out at her friend. “Now, if I was Shadow the Hedgehog, where would I be? Wait, why am I even asking this? She finished her cigarette and poked her hand in the doorway.

  “Yo, angel express!” she called to Gabriel, “do me a favour and zap me to Shadow?” Gabriel skipped out into the garden, flexing his wings and clicking, zapping Alice out of the garden.

  “Now what do we do?” Itch said, raising his eyebrows at Gabriel.

  “Fuck about? We could go get ice cream.” he said, holding a hand out to Itch as an offer.

   A blinding flash of gold and the next thing Alice knew, she was falling. Well, goodbye cruel world. Obviously the Shadow right now that she’d wanted to spawn next to was falling through oblivion. Well that explained why she hadn’t seen him in a whi- her feet hit the ground and she sank into a crouched position. Well, that probably looked really cool to anyone around, which was _hilarious_ considering the fact that she was a pathetic nerd whose only chance at ‘cool’ was getting a pentakill on League of Legends.

   She stood up and looked around. Dozens of trees, spindly and evergreen, crowded round her like confused members of the public trying to figure out how she had appeared out of nowhere. Any other time and she would have jokingly bowed and told the trees she was here all night. Now, however, she stood up and looked around her. Immediately, her tattoo started tingling. He was here. Her eyes raked through the trees, searching. Nothing.

   Alice was about to sink back to the floor in despair, now realising that she was Entirely Alone and Had No Means Of Getting Back if she couldn’t find him, when suddenly a jet of yellow energy flew past her. Was that… a chaos spear? Alice turned and, without thinking, started to run in the direction it had come from. The trees were much more dense here. Another flash of yellow; she literally felt the spear whiz past her face. Heart spooked into a canter, she paused and swallowed hard. He was fighting again. If he was anything like the Shadow he’d know, getting involved would only piss him off. At the same time… images of him having to hold onto her Dad’s coffee table to stay standing started whirring around her head. Nope. She’d rather he be alive and pissed at her than Very Dead. And with her mind made up, she ducked under a tree branch and crept through the woodland toward the source of the spear. The trees opened out to a clearing - a clearing where she could most definitely hear  _voices._ Pulling a branch out the way, Alice could now see into the space, her eyes falling immediately on Shadow. He had his back to her, directly in the middle of the clearing. And standing opposite him. She managed to cover her mouth in time before the sound of her gasping could permeate the air. Wait, no, it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Mephiles. It was just someone in a dark purple cloak that reached down to his feet, a same-coloured mask concealing his face. His laughter - she assumed it was his laughter; it was the kind of cackle you’d associate with a man in a purple cloak and mask - boomed across the clearing all around them.

  “When will you learn that your sad excuse of abilities won’t be able to harm me?” he mocked, bending down slightly to match Shadow’s height. Alice could see the hedgehog’s fists start to clench. Bad news. Yellow energy started to gather around his right hand. More bad news. Roaring, he raised his fist and the chaos spear left his hand, heading for the purple man again. He simply raised a hand and deflected it - so that was why the spears had been headed this way instead of towards him. Speaking of which… one second she was staring at the two of them, the next moment her entire world was engulfed with yellow and she found herself launched backwards through the air, and-THUNK

   Alice’s ears started ringing. The world started spinning. She was vaguely aware of her body sliding down the trunk of a nearby tree. Her chaos emerald tattoo burned. And somewhere far away - getting further and further away as she felt her vision tunnel and the leaves level with her eyes slowly fading to darkness.

 

 


	6. Grace in East Croydon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Itch have a domestic. We find out what happens to Alice. Bad jokes, awkward fluff, and everyone being done with everyone's shit abounds.

   She must have blacked out for a while - she didn’t even know. But when she came round someone was shaking her.

  “Fuck offfffff,” Alice moaned to whichever actual son of a bitch was trying to wake her up. The shaking got more persistent, as if whoever it was was literally trying to shake the strange, muggy darkness out of her mind. She wondered comically if it was falling out of her ears. Sighing, she opened my eyes to see an upside down Shadow the Hedgehog staring down at her.

  “Alice? What happened?” he said. Alice realised she was lying half across his lap, one of his arms round her ribcage as his hand - presumably the one that had been shaking her - rested on her shoulder. She looked to my left through half-closed eyes and saw the base of the tree she’d slid down. She giggled, amazed at how suddenly drunk she sounded.

  “I think,” she said slowly, each consonant sounding strangely detached from each of the others, “that I may have been impaled by your chaos spear.” She giggled again, eyes closing. Instantly the shoulder shaking began again. She opened her eyes and glared at him. He glanced over his shoulder.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said, “they could come back.”

  “I meant to ask,” Alice slurred, her head now starting to really hurt - not just ache, but literally pulsate with pain, “who even _are_ they?”

  He ignored her question, instead pulling her into his arms fucking bridal style like she was the _damn_ sel in distress she’d joked about to Itch. As he did, she felt him suddenly stiffen.

  “You’re a complete livewire of chaos energy,” he said quietly. She looked up at him.

  “What do you mean?”

   He looked down at her tattoo, and she followed his gaze. The entire bloody thing wasn’t just glowing, but swollen, stretching out almost possessively across her skin, positively  _throbbing._

   Then the next thing she knew her entire world was consumed by a flash of blue and then she was staring down a sheer cliff face. She groaned and turned her head away from the view, stomach pitching and rolling more than it had been when she’d come round.She grabbed at the hedgehog’s fur.

  “Prick,” she muttered.

   His chest rumbled with something that must have been close to a laugh. Fucking idiot had to choose now to find her funny. She felt him turn away from the edge and walk until _fucking sweet mary and jesus darkness THANK YOU_. She tried opening an eye again. The cave was dim, but there was a conveniently-placed lantern in there. Maybe this is where he stayed when he needed to rest. He set her down carefully against a rock so she was stuck in a really weird half-sitting, half-lying down position. Then he knelt in front of her.

  “What the hell were you doing in those woods?” he said, and suddenly his tone was cold again. She stared at him.

  “Trying to find you,” she answered simply. He cocked an eyebrow.

  “How did you get there?”

  “Angel express.” She found herself grinning again, the world still pitching and rolling. “Broom broom.”

   He swore under his breath, and she heard Gabriel mentioned in the proceeding monologue somewhere. She looked at him. His gaze was now diverted away from her, on the floor.

  “Shadow, it wasn’t your fault, so don’t you dare blame yourself for it,” Alice said, “it’s not your fault I happened to stumble upon you when you were fighting with that guy. It’s also not your fault that the chaos spear got deflected and happened to hit me.”

  “It _is_ my fault,” he replied flatly, “throwing chaos spears at him hadn’t been working. I don’t know why I tried again. I was angry.” His gaze fell back on the human girl. She sighed.

  “I can’t believe you’re actually acting like this is your fault. Why are you living like it all depends on you?”

   He stiffened at her words. For a moment she thought it was because she’d offended him somehow, but then a familiar tune began to play in her head.

    _I love the way that your heart breaks, with every injustice and deadly fate, praying it’ll all be new, and living like it all depends on you._

   Alice sat up too quickly and the world started spinning, but she refused to back down. She steadied herself by propping herself up on an elbow.

  “You used to listen to that song all the time when you were thirteen and things were bad,” he said quietly.

  “I am not fucking finding out that you’re the you that’s been in my head for the last six years over a fucking Flyleaf song,” Alice retorted sharply. He glanced up at her. She could see the traces of a smile in his gaze. She swallowed and collected herself, brushing a hand through her hair, despite how much the pressure annoyed her throbbing head.

  “So… you remember me listening to that? Man, I must have been into Flyleaf in like… 2010,” she said.

  “You were. Six months after I first appeared. After we first started fighting, side by side in your dreams,” he replied. He stood and began to pace around the cavern. I stared at him, mouth slightly agape. “You listened to that song every day, back when you had to take the train home from secondary school. It was two stops and took 8 minutes.”

  Her mouth threatened to fall open, as if she was nothing better than a cartoon character, with over the top reactions to everything the guy said. “How...do you even remember everything?” Shadow glanced back over at her and shrugged. "I just do."

  The pair fell into silence; Alice found herself worrying that blockade between them had started to slide back down. Thinking of things to say was hard enough, but when you’re possibly concussed as well - and speaking of which, the world was really starting to pitch again. She groaned and lay back down onto the rock. Definitely the best pillow ever.

  “Hey.” She opened her eyes again to look back up at the hedgehog, now kneeling next to her, hand resting gently against the top of her arm. Normally she hated physical contact, but there was something nice about this, and so she let him keep his hand there. Besides, it wouldn’t help things by shrugging him away and shutting him out again. Her eyes drifted past him, finding the cave wall. She felt a small smile rest across her lips.

  “Do you remember when I ran out of secondary school on the last day with my GCSE results in my hand?” she murmured, “I hurdled the fucking picket fences that kept the paths across campus from the grass and everything. Man, I couldn’t wait to leave.”

  “I remember,” he replied quietly, “I was happy for you. No one deserves to hurt that much.”

   She felt a sadder smile settle onto her face now. “Well I should have stayed there, shouldn’t I? Maybe I never should have left on that day. Because things got worse from there. Things got so much worse.”

   The next thing she knew, he was suddenly hugging her, properly hugging her and her head was rested awkwardly on his shoulder and her ribs were hurting from being crushed by his grip and her spine was aching - more from the impact with the tree trunk than anything, but the pressure he was putting on her body wasn’t exactly helping. She groaned.

  “Sorry.” His grip loosened a little, but remained firm. Alice could feel the colour collecting on her face. Fucking physical contact.

  “I still intend to kill him,” he spoke after a few moments, and his voice was so dark it made her shudder. She knew exactly who the ‘he’ was that Shadow was referring to. She patted the hedgehog awkwardly on the shoulder.

  “Okay, Shadow,” she said. Next thing she knew he’d pulled her off of him and was holding her by the upper arms, forcing her to look at him.

  “And now you’re getting defensive,” he said, in a somewhat resigned voice. When he said nothing, he sighed, and looked down for a moment, and when his eyes returned to hers, there was something suddenly desperate about him. He gripped her arms tighter.

  “When you get sarcastic it means you’re getting defensive because it’s how you protect yourself,” he said quietly, eyes boring into hers fiercely. Alice could feel the release radiating off him in waves, and now he was reaching out to her, reaching out for reciprocation, for some kind of assurance that this, this version of him was okay, that he knew her as well as he thought he did, that she hadn’t lied to him about the kind of person she was, had become. She sighed and looked away. 

  “We really don’t have to do the whole _LET ME JUST EXPLAIN SOME STUFF ABOUT YOU_ talk bit. You know that’s true already. You’ve been in my head for six years now.” She lifted her hands, instantly feeling awkward because she had no idea what to do with them. She’d never been good at physical contact. Ever. Not that that seemed to matter apparently, because the next thing she knew, Shadow had suddenly grabbed them in a death grip - he was constantly reaching, constantly grabbing at her, it seemed. Was it because he was scared? Scared she’d just get up and walk away and laugh at him and when you’ve got to know someone so well and they just do that? She curled her fingers round his, holding onto him, pulling him closer towards her. This wasn’t even romantic. Just two people who have known each other for a really long time in a really strange way admitting that they know each other, every intimate detail about each other, and trying to do it in a way that won’t freak the other person out because they are both aware that they are assholes and the other person is an asshole too. Her head was pounding and her heart was pounding and her bones were aching but she didn’t care about those things. He continued to stare at her desperately, almost sadly. She swallowed hard.

  “Yes, I am closed off. I know I am," she began firmly. "And I know you are too. That’s why we haven’t really communicated very well with each other since you came here. I was worried that you weren’t going to be the one that’s been sharing my headspace for the last six years, and you were worried that revealing it was you was going to freak me out. Let’s just acknowledge that we both suck at this and move on." He nodded, and relaxed. Their hands were still attached, and Alice was suddenly aware that she could feel her palms sweating. Gross.

  “How did we even get to have a fucking connection though? Like, that’s not exactly a normal thing, you know this right? I just thought you were a very strange imaginary friend. But it turns out we’ve been able to literally speak across universes for six years. How is that possible?”

   His eyes slid to the left. “It’s complicated and I don’t understand either.”

   Alice raised her eyebrows. “You think I’m stupid. You know something.”

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “Your eyes always slide down and to the left when you’re lying.”

   He sighed and looked back up at her. “It’s not enough to tell you. It’s only interpretation, which I’m not going to bother telling you because I know you hate interpretation.”

  “I never said I hated interpretation.”

  “Why else did you drop out of your English degree for one in social science? Because you hated how there was only interpretation and no straight answers.”

  “I guess, but social science is largely about interpretation anyway.”

  “It’s more about facts though.”   
   “Mmph, that doesn’t really matter right now. What do you know about why we’re connected?”

  “I’m not saying anything.” His eyes flickered back to hers. “You’re probably going to pass out sooner or later if we don’t do something about that concussion.”

   She broke hold with one of her hands and felt her head gingerly. It was true: her eyesight was starting to become blurrier and blurrier, she realised, as she glanced round the cave. She swayed a little on her knees.

  “Better chaos control me to a hospital, then,” she said faintly. He shook his head.

  “Probably not a good idea. Besides.” He broke grip with her other hand and tapped her tattoo, “You have the energy you need to heal right here.”

   Alice could see the green reflecting against his fur. So the chaos spear didn’t just bounce off her. She must have absorbed some of the energy.

  “So how do you-” she begin.

  “I think you can do it,” he replied, “at least - I can try and teach you.”

   She cracked a smile. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to harness and use chaos energy, Shadow.”

  “You don’t have to harness it, you just have to let it do what it wants to do.” He grabbed both her hands again and placed them carefully on her tattoo. “Now concentrate.”

  “On what?”

  “Just concentrate.” A few seconds later. “Actually concentrate, Alice. Don’t mess around.”

  “Have you ever tried concentrating with a fucking concussion?”

  “Yes. It’s not that much harder.”

   Alice sighed and shut her eyes, focusing her attention on my tattoo. Sure enough, she could feel something swirling under her skin, bubbling right down in the centre of her body. That’s not where it wanted to be, though, something told her.  

_'Look, my head’s this way,'_ she mentally called out to the energy. She summoned a picture of her brain into her mind, and like a dog and its owner, coaxed the energy into her head, the burning sensation following, travelling up her throat, further and further up.

 “It’s working,” Shadow murmured. She flapped a hand to quieten him, waiting until her brain was filled with energy, until the burning in her head subsided to a gentle warmth. She opened her eyes. Slowly, the world stopped swimming. Her vision began to find clarity again.

  “Look it worked I did a thing!” she said, punching the air with both my hands.

   Shadow crossed his arms, mouth opening - and that was when Alice heard a strange ping in her head, and then everything exploded.

 “Alice?” She could feel him calling to her somewhere far above in the darkness that now consumed her, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t reach him, she was falling too fast. Her mouth was working though; her throat burnt. _“GET IT OUT GET IT OUT!”_

   A hand on the centre of her chest. Everything went silent.

 

   Itch shrugged, before nodding to ice cream. Ice cream sounds good right about now. Gabriel beamed, summoning up a bowl each, ice cream scoops in each one. He shoved a bowl to Itch before digging into his own, licking the spoon like an over-enthusiastic dog.

  “Can I ask you somethin’?” Itch asked quietly, poking the mint choc chip scoop around his bowl, watching the green ice cream melt on the white ceramic.

  “Shoot,” he said, looking up at Itch, a concerned glint taking over the golden colour of his eyes.

  “Why me?” Itch asked, not looking up.

  “What do you mean, why you?” Gabriel said quietly, poking Itch’s ice cream scoop with his own spoon, making it stop melting for a while so they didn’t end up with a puddle of mint flavoured liquid.

  “Why’d you chose me of all people to show yourself to?” he asked, pushing the bowl away.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You fucking know what I mean. I’m an atheist, I hate religion and everything it stands for. I’m cynical, I’m a huge fucking asshole, and honestly? I’m just a bit shit all round. So why me?” He slammed the spoon down, just slightly losing his shit.

  “Because despite all that you believe in me?”

  “Do I though? I don’t know what I believe in anymore. Because every fucking thing inside me right now is screaming that this is bullshit and that I shouldn’t believe any of this because there’s no rational explanation behind it, there’s barely any proof behind any of it, and why you. Why are you the magical fucking voice in my head that tells me it’s going to get better. Why you,” he said, standing up and pacing the room, rubbing his face.

  “Why don’t we go somewhere else-”

  “No, put your fingers down Novak and answer my damn question. Why me, why did you choose me of all people to come and watch over, to speak to, to look after. You should know that it was going to freak me out!” Gabriel scowled, snapping his fingers anyway, landing them both in a field of flowers. Fucking flowers. Itch sighed, hands on his hips, looking up at Gabriel. “I thought I said-”

  “Yeah, but I’m an archangel so shut the fuck up and listen to me,” he snapped, and Itch sat down with a thud. Gabriel didn’t sit, just standing over him. “Okay, listen. I chose you because you seem like a decent person. Sure, you’re not religious, sure you don’t believe in shit, and sure you feel like you’re going mad, but you’re not. Those phantom wings you feel? Yeah, that’s your own Grace dumbass, and I’m the one holding it back so they don’t go _pompf_ in the middle of East Croydon.” He sat down, grabbing Itch’s face and smooshing it slightly. “I’m sorry alright? I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner, I’m sorry you suffered for so long alone with no one to help, but I’m here now okay? Gabriel Novak is here, and he’s here to stay.” Gabriel Novak is here, and he’s here to stay. Itch sniffed a little, before pushing Gabriel away, getting his hands off his face.

  “Okay but, why now. Why did all the bad shit have to happen, then you show up. Why did I have to be laughed at and beat down on, mocked and ridiculed and left to pick up the pieces of myself one by one without anyone to help. Why couldn’t you have fucking showed up when I lost all my friends the first time, when I lost them all again. Why now. Why.”

  “Because- I don’t know, okay, I don’t know. All I know is one day I’m minding my own business pranking people, the next second I realise you and I have a-”

  “Don’t say profound bond.”

  “I was going to say connection,” he sighed, before turning around and laying down, planting his head in Itch’s lap and looking up at the overly emotional teenager. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner.”

  “S’okay. I forgive you,” he muttered, running his hands through Gabriel’s hair. He did, he did forgive him.

 

   Alice opened one eye. Her head was hammering. She groaned and shut it again. Then the events of the last few hours actually came back to her and her eyes flew open, pushing herself up into a sitting position. She was back at her Dad's house, propped up on the sofa, her head having been rested clumsily against one of the many cushions.

  “I fucked up I fucked up,” she said, twisting her head and seeing the familiar hedgehog crouched near her feet. He regarded her coldly. “What happened?”

  “The chaos energy couldn’t find a way out,” he said shortly, “it almost ripped your brain apart.” He stepped off the sofa, arms folded, with his back to her.

  “S-sorry.”

   He bent his head. "Not your fault. It’s mine. I fixed it. You’ll be fine now.” And then, he was gone.

   Alice flopped down against the pillow. A beat of silence. Then the next thing she knew, she was pounding her fist against the cushion next to her. Fucking stupid human being. Everything had been going great. And now she was back to square one with him.

   When she fell asleep again, her dreams were full of that strange guy in the purple cloak with the black hair, his laughter booming out across the newly empty space of her mind.

 

 


End file.
